Guide – RP Fights

[Parker]

I’ve gone through a couple of RP fight sparring sessions now, and so I am starting to put together a working guide to RP fights which I thought I would share. Anyone who knows better, please comment with corrections and clarifications.

1. OVERVIEW

RP fights are story-based combat; stats matter only in the abstract, with the game calculating relative strength of characters behind the scenes. An RP fight can be any sort of conflict — physical, magical, social, a board game — between two people.

In an RP fight, characters alternate combat poses for five rounds. At the end of the five rounds, one of them is the winner and can either capture the other or force the other to flee home.

Mechanically, characters win an RP fight by balancing two conflicting things — keeping Momentum during the fight, which they gain primarily by adding additional Vulnerabilities to themself between emotes when they do not have Momentum, and guessing their opponents’ Vulnerabilities correctly between emotes when they do have Momentum.

2. STARTING AN RP FIGHT

To start an RP fight, you type RPFIGHT <TARGET>.

While the help file says you can use RPFIGHT <TARGET> <TYPE>, right now none of the types are working.

When you use RPFIGHT <TARGET>, the target is presented with a request:

<Aggressor name> is trying to start a roleplay fight with you, type 'yes' to agree.

At present, you can only say ‘yes’; to say no, you just need to ignore it. After some unknown period of time, it will expire.

Once the target accepts the fight, the fight begins.

3. SETUP

Before the first emote, each participant needs to use a couple of setup commands:

OFFENSE <COMMA-SEPARATED LIST>
DEFENSE <COMMA-SEPARATED LIST>

Set the stats and other items you are using for offense and defense with a comma-separated list. If you do not separate items with commas, they will not appear.

You can use:

– Skills, powers and disciplines
– Gear (‘help gear’)

According to the help file, you can also use ‘environmental factors’ and ‘room damage’. I have not figured out how to reliably include these.

If you select something that isn’t valid, it will just print a blank line in ‘offense’ or ‘defense’ later in the fight.

It appears that your offense and defense choices do not affect the outcome of the fight. Instead, they are a guide for you and your opponent to write your emotes. Outcome is determined by a background calculation of relative power.

You can change your offense or defense at any time with the offense command, including mid-fight, to represent changing approaches.

VULNERABILITY <SPACE SEPARATED LIST>

Type VULNERABILITY alone will show you the list of possible vulnerabilities, but for short reference, they are:

Physical: Tired, Pained, Impaired Senses, Weakened Limb, Intoxicated
Tactical: Off Balance, Distracted, Predictable, Stuck, Running Low
Emotional: Angry, Scared, Embarrassed, Pity, Hopeless
Psychological: Overconfident, Paranoid, Confused, Obsessed

You need to select at least one to start the fight, and can select them as a list. This list should be space separated, rather than comma-separated.

It’s not clear what selecting multiple vulnerabilities does, but it appears that it increases your chance of getting momentum for the first round.

The start of a fight is the only opportunity you have to select vulnerabilities; later in the fight, they will be assigned by the game. It makes sense to select vulnerabilit(ies) that match with the circumstances of the fight starting.

4. RP Fight Rounds

After both participants have set offense, defense, and starting vulnerability, the fight begins.

A. Aggressor Attacks

One participant will be nominated as the aggressor. My testing couldn’t determine who it chooses; it seems to preference the person with more vulnerabilities, who started the fight, and who is higher tier/more dangerous generally.

The aggressor picks a possible vulnerability from the list they think the target might have with TARGET <VULNERABILITY>.

They will then see the relative levels of their chosen offense stats and the defendant’s relevant defense stats, and whether or not they selected the target’s vulnerability correctly.

Based on that information, the aggressor writes a combat emote where they describe how they are attacking the target. As discussed above, the chosen combat stats appear to just be guides to write the emote, akin to ‘showstat’ — they don’t appear to affect outcomes from testing. So, if you are using Striking as your offensive stat, and they are using Dexterity as their defensive stat, it’s okay that disciplines and skills don’t line up — you are using martial arts to punch at them while they try to dodge out of the way.

B. Defender Reaction

After the aggressor has used TARGET <VULNERABILITY>and emoted, the defender will also see the relevant Offense and Defense stats to help them craft their defense emote, as well as whether or not the aggressor successfully exploited one of their vulnerabilities.

Once the attacker’s emote has fired off, the defender must choose to take on between 1 and 3 additional vulnerabilities, which will be assigned by the game. In testing, I don’t know if the vulnerabilities are assigned randomly or if there is a LLM in the background. The command to choose the number of vulnerabilities is VULNERABILITY <1-3>.

Additionally, the defender can choose to take on negative ‘consequences’ using the CONSEQUENCES command; see below for a description of consequences. Once the defender has chosen a Vulnerability level from 1-3 and any (optional) consequences, they emote.

After the defender’s emote, the game will determine who has momentum for the next round.

Based on testing, it appears that momentum is determined primarily by how many vulnerabilities the defender chooses. Whether or not the defender takes 1 or more consequences as well as relative power also seems to play a role.

5. Ending the Fight

The fight ends at the end of the fifth round if the person with momentum has exploited more vulnerabilities than the defender. If there’s a tie, character power determines outcome.

When the fight ends, the aggressor can choose to try to capture their opponent or let them flee to their coded home. The defender doesn’t know the aggressor’s choice, and can choose to either be captured, flee, or defer to the aggressor’s choice.

Either character can end a fight early by typing LOSEFIGHT FLEE or LOSEFIGHT CAPTURE, at which point they either flee home or are captured.

Being captured means being knocked unconscious.

6. CONSEQUENCES

Consequences are always chosen by the defender. While the attacker can suggest a consequence in context in their emote, they don’t have the ability to force a consequence on the defender.

A. Physical Injuries

CONSEQUENCE PHYSINJURY <Description> — This will add a physical injury line to your description. For example:

CONSEQUENCE PHYSINJURY She is limping on her right leg.

will update your description to be:

  This is a lady testing code in her mid-20s.
  You would judge her to be a 7.4 out of 10.
  She is 5'4" and has fair skin, black hair, and green eyes.
  You can see her face, neck, arms, and hands.
  She is limping on her right leg.

I don’t know how long physical injury descriptions last for at this time based on testing.

B. Mystic Injuries

CONSEQUENCE MYSTICINJURY <Description> — This will add a mystic injury line to your aura. It appears it is only viewable by people with an Arcane Focus. For example:

CONSEQUENCE MYSTICINJURY Her aura is streaked with red blood.

will update your aura to be:

`The silvery mist of the tempted in his aura occasionally ripples like heat waves,
revealing her dual vulnerability to darkness (I1)(T2)
You perceive the signs of mystic curses/bans in their aura
Her aura is streaked with red blood.`

I don’t know how long mystic injury descriptions last for at this time based on testing.

C. Room Damage

CONSEQUENCE ROOMDAMAGE <Description> — This will add an adddesc to a room for damage. It appears at the bottom of the room after any adddescs.

The repair command does not remove this damage. I do not yet know how long the damage description lasts for.

D. Item Consequences

Three different consequences involve items you are wearing or that are in your inventory.

CONSEQUENCE LOSEITEM <Item Name> — Sends an item to your stash. Your opponent will see that you lost the item.

CONSEQUENCE GIVEITEM <Item Name> — Gives an item to your opponent. It ends up in their inventory.

CONSEQUENCE DAMAGEITEM <Item Name> — Puts a (Damaged) tag next to item to show that it is damage. I do not yet know how long the tag lasts for.

E. Moving the Fight

With CONSEQUENCE MOVEFIGHT <Direction>, you can move the fight in a cardinal direction. Right now, you can -only- move through doors; if they are open, you will move through them, and if they are closed, you will break the door down. You cannot move into open rooms or through walls.

Doors destroyed when moving can be repaired normally.

F. Psychic Injury

The help file lists a ‘psychicinjury’ type, but it appears to not currently work.

[Parker]

I apologize for how hard the code blocks are to read under the default forum scheme! Highlight them and you can see.

[Luka]

Does moving the fight through a door break even locked doors?

[Parker]

All, Tyr has been hard at work bugfixing:

RPFIGHT TYPES

The big news!

RPFIGHT <PERSON> <TYPE> now works. Types are arcane, psychic, martial arts, brawl, wrestle, duel, debate, argument, and game.

From testing, choosing a different RP fight type impacts how it calculates who is stronger in terms of momentum calculation, and also the vulnerabilities assigned to you. In a game or argument fight type, for instance, momentum is much more likely to shift even if people have different power levels. I don’t know, but suspect, that things like arcane fights give edges to people with arcane stats, while brawl or martial arts fights prioritize those sorts of statistics.

Additionally, it seems to spit out vulnerabilities that ‘make sense’. So in an argument fight, I saw a lot of ‘confused’ or ‘overconfident’ vulnerabilities, but not ‘pained’ or ‘weakeend limbs’.

Note that even a game, debate or argument ends in only one of two ways, with either the loser going helpless or the loser fleeing back to their home.

OTHER UPDATES TO THE GUIDE

Physical injury description lines, mystic injury aura changes, and damaged tags on items seem to last around a day.

The ‘movefight’ consequence will break through locked doors. It still won’t go through empty spaces or walls, but I know Tyr has gone through a couple of iterations of code and is working on squishing it.

I will do a big guide update — perhaps as a Google Doc — once it seems like we’re stable in the bugs department.

[Author]

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